674 
COMBATS BETWEEN 
daemons, of the vast regions beyond the terrible heights of 
Elborz; who, in fact, were no other than the Sabian kings of 
eastern Scythia, and the neighbouring princes of the same faith. 
Jealous of the ambition of Darius, and abhorring the tenets of 
die man he upheld as a prophet, they made constant devastating 
inroads into the empire, and with merciless zeal sacrificed all 
they found to their offended deities. The celebrated Deev 
Sufeed, whom Roostam, the Hercules of Persia, slew, was no 
other than a loyal prince of Hyrcania, whose spells of enchant¬ 
ment were his good sword and dauntless heart; but meeting 
an equal arm in that of his invincible adversary, one dmmon, at 
least, was proved to be vulnerable. Not content with at¬ 
tributing to these nations the minds of evil spirits, the followers 
of Zoroaster represented their persons under the imagery of 
dragons, griffins, and supernatural monsters of every description ; 
through whole armies of which, we are told, Roostam fought 
his way, before he could storm the castle of their magician 
master. In after-times, when the caliphs introduced a new 
creed into this part of the East, and the bulk of the people 
embraced it, still their superstitions remained the same, only 
changing their objects. The tribes amongst them who adhered 
to the worship of the sun, became transformed in their eyes; 
and to their imaginations, filled the long-vacated places of the 
deevs and devils. When they were mouldered away, buried 
under the ashes of their extinguished altars, the fiercer schisma¬ 
tic found a sanctuary in their deserted caves; and deriving 
the name with the station, in the person of Hassan Saheb, we 
find a second Deev Sufeed inhabiting the fastnesses of Elborz. 
On recollecting all these several accounts, we cannot be sur¬ 
prised when a Persian, standing by our sides at Persepolis, points 
